Clip from a BBC Four documentary on the US government’s bizarre Project Orion, a plan to send spaceships around our solar system with nuclear power. The extent to which the space program was actually a high-level fusion of hard tech and just batshit crazy science fiction plans has always fascinated me. These guys were looking to science fiction writers as their creative team, basically. The romance of just making insane ideas real, and it actually working (well, at least to some extent)... why isn’t it like this anymore?
The extraordinary yet true account of a secret US government-backed attempt to build a spaceship the size of an ocean liner and send it to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, propelled by thousands of miniature nuclear bombs.
Beginning in 1958 Project Orion ran until 1965, employing some of the best scientists in the world, including the brilliant British mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson. “Freeman Dyson is one of the few authentic geniuses I’ve ever met”, says Arthur C. Clarke. “Orion isn’t crazy. It would work. The question isn’t whether we could do it, but whether we should do it”.
The film uncovers a contemporary angle to Project Orion. Arthur C. Clarke states that today’s generation are once again serious about going to Mars and that NASA has once more become interested in similar nuclear technology as used by Project Orion in the early 60s.